Using a Typewriter Simulator to Teach Media History -- Jerz's Literacy Weblog (est. 1999)

Working on the syllabus for my “Media and Culture” class on the history and future of the book.

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14 thoughts on “Using a Typewriter Simulator to Teach Media History”

I would love to take the course.

I love to teach this work as a way to make my students aware of the materiality of spaces and carriage returns with a typewriter. http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/stefans__star_wars_one_letter_at_a_time.html

I had a manual typewriter in my Writing Center when I taught First Grade . One of my students excitedly exclaimed,”Wow! Check it out! This doesn’t even need batteries or electricity to work!”

Bradley William Bleck says:
2 Jan 2018 at 12:12 am
But good luck threading that ribbon!
Reply

I worked in an office once where what they called “kindergarten skills” were routinely used to cut and paste: actual, physical cutting and pasting of documents, then using a copy machine to create the doctored one.

The simulation only shows about 200 words at a time, so yes, they will either have to assemble printouts or screenshots.

Will they get to really cut and paste/tape?

My hubby and I had five or six portable typewriters; the best one (my mother’s) was taken by a young relative early on. We still have a portable electric Smith-Corona, which I’ve kept for “sentimental” reasons. No idea where to get ribbons for it, though … well, I have to admit I haven’t actually looked online, or anywhere else. I really have NO DESIRE to go back to a typewriter … When I was working on my Master of Library Science at UC Berkeley in the ’60s, the hardest class for me was the first semester of cataloging; I actually had to RENT a decent typewriter to churn out those neat and perfect catalog cards!!! 🙁

I can cancel an office hour for that time slot – let me know what day :). I even have old dip pens, real goose quills, and a bamboo dip quill that Evan made in art class a year and a half ago. I’m in!